Thursday, October 1, 2026
Bellmore became the Long Island homecoming for Baldwin filmmaker Alain Martin’s decade-long documentary project last Sunday, when “The Forgotten Occupation” made its local premiere at Bellmore Movies and Showplace. The screening was part of a tour commemorating the 111th anniversary of the beginning of the U.S. occupation of Haiti.
“I’m elated that the project is finally coming to Long Island,” Martin, 45, said. “There are a lot of cultural and artistic events about Haiti that mostly take place in Brooklyn and Manhattan. People forget we have a rich, vibrant Haitian community here, and I’m hoping with this screening, we can encourage other Haitian filmmakers to remember those of us in Long Island. I’m happy I was able to make this happen, and it feels validating.”
Nassau County Legislator Carrié Solages, who is of Haitian descent, joined Martin in bringing the documentary to Bellmore. Martin said he had long known Bellmore Movies and Showplace’s reputation as a welcoming venue for independent filmmakers, and he asked about showing the film there. Then a mutual connection put him in touch with Solages’ chief of staff, Martin said. Solages had heard about the documentary from someone who had seen it in Los Angeles.
For Martin, the premiere was more than another stop on the film’s growing tour. Much of “The Forgotten Occupation” was edited on Long Island, and Martin organized the Bellmore screening himself.
“I reached out to DSA, PSL, Haitians of NYC to help me with outreach, and they did not hesitate to come on board,” he said referring to the Long Island chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. “This is also my hometown screening. The film was mostly edited in Long Island, so it’s a coming-home party.”
Martin, who grew up in Jacmel, Haiti, before emigrating to the United States at age 13, spent more than a decade creating the documentary while working in finance on Long Island. The film examines the American occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and frames that history as a letter to Martin’s late grandfather, who came of age during the occupation.
Following the assassination of Haitian President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam in July 1915, President Woodrow Wilson sent U.S. Marines into Haiti to “restore order” and “maintain political and economic stability” in the Caribbean, according to the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Historian. The occupation lasted nearly two decades.
Since the Herald spoke with Martin in February, the film has reached more audiences across the country — in Miami; at Temple University, in Philadelphia; at the People’s Forum, in Manhattan; at a theater in upstate Nyack — and around the world, including the Cinélux in Geneva, Switzerland.
The film concluded its festival run in 2024, and made its New York premiere at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum in February. Its current tour commemorates 111 years since the occupation began, with screenings planned in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Boston and New Jersey, as well as Norway. Martin said that Adelphi University and other organizations have also expressed interest in showing it.
His interactions with viewers, he said, have reinforced why he spent more than a decade making it. At a Manhattan screening, he recalled, an older woman approached him afterward and broke down in tears.
“She had remembered brief episodes of the occupation, and watching the film bought back those memories,” Martin said.
At a screening in Washington, he said, an audience member told him that she had supported American intervention in Haiti before seeing the documentary, but watching it changed her mind.
Those encounters have also given new meaning to something Martin told the Herald in February. “As more people have seen the film, I am even more convinced that this was my gift to Haiti,” he said. “So many people have called, texted, emailed to thank me for making the film and how much it changed them and how much of their own family dynamics they see in it.”
The journey has been rewarding, he said, but also frustrating, because he wants the documentary to reach more viewers outside the Haitian diaspora. “The journey has been inspiring, although discouraging at times,” he said. “I mean, me and my team made the first ever feature film on the topic of the U.S. occupation. A lot of people in Haiti have now seen it and have gone out of their way to get in touch with me to thank me. That feels good. Discouraging because I feel as though not enough people beyond the Haitian diaspora have seen this. But we are working to change it.”
The Long Island premiere also came as Haitian immigrants face uncertainty over their ability to remain in the United States. Martin said the current debate has made the documentary’s mission feel more urgent.
“In Long Island … we have a lot of Haitians facing the threat of deportation,” he said. “Someone told me a lot of people would love to attend the screening, but they are afraid of leaving their houses.”
Martin views the current moment through the history explored in his documentary, arguing that the American occupation contributed to conditions that have shaped generations of Haitian migration. “The occupation largely made Haiti unlivable,” he said. “It kick-started the immigration phenomenon going on now. And yet many of us are now being made to feel unwelcome here.”
For Martin, bringing the film to Long Island was an opportunity to make that century-old history resonate closer to home. “I hope they’re thinking about their fellow Haitians right here in Long Island,” he said, “who are now facing an existential crisis.”
